You may notice that bloggers take different approaches to serving ads on their sites. Some don't have any ads and others have so many ads you wonder if you're on a wine blog or a commerce site. For me, I have chosen to include ads as a service to those who come to the site. I will only put ads of items that I have enjoyed myself or that I think are relevant to my audience, so that you can reach those items directly from the site, instead of trying to find it on your own.
Let me know if the ads are useful or not - I'm always open to suggestions.
-
Gadget
I'm just starting to check into ads for my SLO County food and wine blog. I'm a bit particular and I'm struggling with how picky I want to be as I only want relevant ads. I really enjoyed your site and I will definitely try the "Big House Wines." I took to heart the comments about these wines more than the ads on your site. That makes me wonder--do readers pay more attention to the blog posts/comments than to the ads of a blog?
Best,
Elizabeth in SLO
yes, i tend to think that most people are more influenced by the article than by the ad. i don't think this is the case in every context (i.e. on sites with very broad reach), but for blogs, where the audience tends to be niche, my feeling is that people get to know the blogger, trust the blogger and then start to act on their recommendations. it's my intent to make ads be something that i would stand behind, which is why i have my amazon ads set up like i do. google adsense is a little harder to control, but, i don't have many ads on the site.
the key, at least for me, is that i don't expect to make any money off this site through ads. if i ever did down the road, fine, but for almost every blogger i know, they do it because they love it, not for the money.
good luck.